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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#471

Post by rkomorn »

whilenot-dev wrote: post #458
rkomorn wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have access to any data that supports my vibes, but it just feels like any business that sells stuff has very little incentive to actually give you what you're searching for. I can't think of a single online store that's good at search and it seems like it's because the thought is "don't miss anything that might come close to the search terms". Whether it's Amazon, IKEA, the supermarkets where I live, etc, an…

Probably the virtual variant of the Gruen effect in action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer Fortunately we still have Geizhals in AT[0]/DE[1]/PL[2]/UK[3] to work around that. [0]: https://geizhals.at/ [1]: https://geizhals.de/ [2]: https://cenowarka.pl/ [3]: https://skinflint.co.uk/

Yeah. I kinda regret my comment 'cause it's not like I've stumbled into some discovery of human behavior no one else thought about. :)

I just felt a little tangy/pontificaty.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#472

Post by wiether »

justinclift wrote: post #93
chairmansteve wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top?". Don't get too greedy. There must be examples... 37Signals?

Maybe B corporations?

Outside of the tech world, Unilever is one of the worst mega-companies in basically everything they do.

Yet, their ANZ branch is certified since 2022: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/uni...

B Corp enshitified itself, trying to get bigger, instead of staying true to its (supposed) mission

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#473

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

It’s been like that for years. Just stop using it along with other Google-services, their products are unsafe dogshit, their earning model is to sell you and your privacy, not make great products.

I use several search engines (Brave, duckduck) to find stuff along with different AI-models (outside the browser, I disable the browser ones). This way I have at least some semblance of control of my information and no one company controls everything. Something like Google or Microsoft shouldn’t even exist.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#474

Post by arkh »

behnamoh wrote: post #70
LorenDB wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also should just stop using Google Search. DuckDuckGo is solid, or if you don't want to use search results from Bing's index, I've been very happy with Brave Search.

people say that but they often come back to Google ;) I've just learnt to use ad blockers. the only time I disable it is when I look up the definition of something or the location of a place and the entire page goes blank because of some rules I've added to uBlock.

> people say that but they often come back to Google ;)

It used to be the case.

One of my laptop is setup with default DDG and the rare times I switch back to google I'm disappointed by even worse results.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#475

Post by liqilin1567 »

johnfn wrote: post #249

Can anyone reproduce this? When I search "Midjourney", I get an ad for Midjourney (from Midjourney), followed by Midjourney, the site. After that, I get the Midjourney Discord, the Midjourney subreddit, the Midjourney Wikipedia page, and then (inexplicably), another Midjourney ad. That seems about as good as it could be. Edit: I guess I should say that I do agree that the quality of Google Search is pretty poor these…

Just tried on my own on google, I get the Midjourney official site on 1 result, followed by Wikipedia about Midjourney. I am not a midjourney user.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#476

Post by wiether »

moduspol wrote: post #299
seanssel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Kagi, been using it for over a year now. Sadly I haven’t been able to get anyone else on board, even with gift subs.

I tried for a while but found too much friction getting it all working on my phone (iOS). It wasn’t TOO crazy—I just think Apple didn’t take into account that a search engine might require authentication. Though maybe it’s easier now—I should give it another look.

I switched to Orion as my main browser on my iPhone

I was using Firefox previously

So, not only my overall browser experience improved, but Kagi is natively _infused_ in Orion, so that was the easiest setup I had to make

If you have settings synced between devices, I'd see how that would be an issue (I'm still 100% on Firefox on my Linux/MacOS/Windows devices)

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#478

Post by imiric »

zeroq wrote: post #373

One of my "sales pitches" is "I can find answers online, I know kung-fu". I've been using internet since '98, and I somehow developed this elusive skill of knowing how to navigate all these ads, seo farms, paid content, murky websites, and getting straight to the answer, no matter what the question was. For a long time I didn't thought of that as a special power. I thought it was natural, like driving a car, or speak…

> I genuinely think Google is finished as a search engine for the web.

Google Search is garbage, but highly unlikely to be "finished". Millions of people still find it useful, and Google is adopting "AI" on the results page just like any other "AI" web search service. The reason the UX is not good is, first of all, subjective, and second of all, because Google is in the advertising business, and they've found it more profitable to corrupt their results page and deal with any negative feedback, than to deliver clean results like they did decades ago without the profit.

This is a carefully planned, tested, and executed design decision, just like anything they do on the SERP, and not some arbitrary sign that they don't know what they're doing anymore.

The possibility of a new player disrupting the dominance of a trillion-dollar corporation that has built a highly optimized index of the entire web over decades, by leveraging technology that requires vast resources to run, is highly unlikely. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Google could improve the search UX tomorrow if they wanted to.

> The only problem is that we don't have a solid contender yet.

Sure we do. Kagi offers a much better UX, and I haven't had the need to rely on external results for nearly a year now. I haven't tried Perplexity, but I imagine it could be good as well, depending on the quality of its index.

But these are relatively niche services catering to an audience that cares about these things. The sad reality is that most people simply don't, and will use whatever search engine is set as default in their browser. Which is why being the default is worth paying millions, and is literally keeping companies like Mozilla alive.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#479

Post by rkomorn »

wiether wrote: post #476
moduspol wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried for a while but found too much friction getting it all working on my phone (iOS). It wasn’t TOO crazy—I just think Apple didn’t take into account that a search engine might require authentication. Though maybe it’s easier now—I should give it another look.

I switched to Orion as my main browser on my iPhone I was using Firefox previously So, not only my overall browser experience improved, but Kagi is natively _infused_ in Orion, so that was the easiest setup I had to make If you have settings synced between devices, I'd see how that would be an issue (I'm still 100% on Firefox on my Linux/MacOS/Windows devices)

If you don't mind taking the time: as an actual user, what would you say are the top 3 things you, personally, get out of this?

I'm a Kagi user, primarily for the non-sponsored search results.

The AI stuff in Kagi doesn't pique my interest. Their Orion pitch also doesn't, but I'm interested in an actual user's opinion.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#480

Post by shreezus »

jpmattia wrote: post #210

Like many of you, I serve as IT support for family. Some of those family are beginning to slip cognitively, so I'd like to say: Fk google for doing this. You are confusing my relatives who cannot tell the difference between your ad-spam and actual links, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are now taking advantage of old people. I'm trying to install adblockers (uBlock) and move them over to chatgpt when po…

This is a real risk. I know of someone who got phished with a fake number for Apple Support (the fake number was promoted and appeared at the top of the search results). Apparently they do this with banking phone numbers as well.
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